Facebook Confirms Altoona, Iowa Data Center

Facebook today confirmed that it will indeed build a massive data center in Altoona, Iowa.

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Facebook today confirmed that it will indeed build a massive data center in Altoona, Iowa.

"We're excited to have found a new home in Iowa, which has an abundance of wind-generated power and is home to a great talent pool that will help build and operate the facility," Facebook said in a statement. "We plan to break ground this summer and expect to begin serving user traffic in 2014."

The Altoona facility will be Facebook's fourth owned and operated data center, and its third in the U.S. The three others are located in: Prineville, Oregon; Forest City, North Carolina; and Lulea, Sweden.

Facebook will invest a minimum of $299.5 million in the project, according to a news release issued Tuesday by Iowa Governor Terry Branstad. During the first phase, Facebook plans to build a 476,000-square-foot data center, but the 194-acre Altoona site could accommodate up to two additional data centers that would be constructed in future phases of the project.

In its announcement, Facebook said the Altoona facility will feature the same energy-efficient server designs and outdoor-air cooling system found at its other data centers. But Altoona will go a step further, and incorporate "evolutionary improvements to the building design, networking architecture, and more," Facebook said. "When complete, Altoona will be among the most advanced and energy efficient facilities of its kind."

It appears that the massive data center will be at least partially powered using wind energy, which should be good news to environmental advocacy groups like Greenpeace. In a statement, Greenpeace International senior IT analyst Gary Cook encouraged Facebook to push the site's supplier MidAmerican for renewable energy.

"Facebook has chosen a location where it has great potential to power its newest data center with the wind energy that is booming there," Cook said. "We expect Facebook to meet the ambition it has expressed in its renewable energy goals by following the example Google has set in Oklahoma and North Carolina and demanding that MidAmerican provide significant new renewable energy to Iowa's grid to meet the expected large electricity demand of Facebook's data center."

Greenpeace has criticized the social network in the past for using coal to power its massive data centers, but Facebook has since increased its focus on sustainability efforts.

Angela has been a PCMag reporter since January 2012. Prior to joining the team, she worked as a reporter for SC Magazine, covering everything related to hackers and computer security. Angela has also written for The Northern Valley Suburbanite in New Jersey, The Dominion Post in West Virginia, and the Uniontown-Herald Standard in Pennsylvania. She is a graduate of West Virginia University's Perely Isaac Reed School of Journalism.
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